Fragments of Manhattan
Fragments of Manhattan is the first Westbury Detectives chapter, originally started on January 24, 2011 and completed on April 8, 2011. In this chapter, most of the vital characters are introduced, in which Jack moves to Westbury and accidentally becomes Pinhead Miyamoto's rival. Synopsis Jack Arthur is working in a joint office with Vic White while thinking about an incident when he was five, in which he cut his back on a barbed wire fence after a group of Spanish kids tried to lead him into the valley, leading to the second-oldest having to carry him home. Their secretary, Dory Shulman, comes in to inform Jack that he's being transferred to Westbury in light of his girlfriend's shooting, and promptly avoids a pass from him. In the present time, Jack is stuck working on missing person reports and traffic tickets while trying to avoid Dr. Byrd's young daughter. Byrd offers Jack a chance to go undercover and find the son of a late mob leader, Pinhead Miyamoto, whom plans to recruit new members as part of an attack on the police department until the name of the investigator who killed his father is released. Meanwhile, Pinhead and assistants Cain and Arbrook are eating at the Sunset Grill, with Miyamoto describing a plan to kidnap a child simply to make the police aware of him. Emma Bishop and her nephew Robin Brooks meet him, with Robin's appearance giving Miyamoto an idea. At school, Becky is cornered by two classmates who offer to cut her teddy bear open. As the bear is connected to a radio in Byrd's office, she uses a call from him to scare the boys off. Becky accepts a ride home from Robin, with Cain driving, whom then offers Becky a piece of drugged candy. Two hours later, Byrd calls off Jack's undercover assignment, panicking over the fact that Becky has disappeared and her bear has been found in a ditch. Jack, disgusted, takes Mara with him to search the area himself. At a cement factory, Becky is actually safely asleep in an office Miyamoto has taken over, and the gang overhears Jack's car as they attempt to dump the foreman's body. Jack and Mara enter, splitting up to search, with Mara heading off in Becky's direction while Jack runs into the gang... Title Fragments of Manhattan, or "Manhattan no Kakera" is the fifth track on Miki Matsubara's 1984 album Cool Cut, from which most of the chapter titles in Westbury Detectives are drawn from. The song has a soft, upbeat but nostalgic tone , with syntheszed drums, piano, and a male chorus as backing. Originally the chapter had no title, but midway through, Fauna became increasingly inspired by the album and worked it in. Background Information * Several pages were redone in 2011/mid-2012 after Fauna became unsatisfied with the quality, mostly to touch up Pinhead's mugshot (which featured a prototype design) and expand the ending to the longer, more engaging scene originally planned. * Clay Emmett is, on the original pages, referred to as "King" in relation to his incarnation in Fauna's debut work Cinderelliot, which was later edited to move away from that work. *The Sunset Grill is also the title of a Don Henley song, off the 1984 album "Building the Perfect Beast". *Fauna meant to imply that the women Jack talks to while undercover are also a lesbian couple. *On the page where Pinhead instructs his gang to safely grab Mara, the table next to him shows what was originally intended as a razor blade and cocaine, which would have lead to a scene where he finishes the drug in front of Jack. Fauna edited it out soon after rejecting the idea of him being a drug addict, as well as the scene itself for personally nauseating her. Original Concept Fragments of Manhattan was conceived as being one of three short chapters, all three of mostly solemn tone, but Fauna expanded the series after fan response was largely positive. In the planned but not-enacted darker version of this chapter, Pinhead was originally going to threaten Jack to kill himself or he'd sell Mara and Becky to Thai business partners, implying but not directly mentioning they'd be at risk of joining a brothel. In the original script, Jack would have been happy Rachel was shot ("Sometimes it comes back to me in my dreams...seeing her in the hospital, all the panic and fighting...and then I wake up laughing!"), and a scene where Pinhead snorts cocaine right before fighting Jack. Fauna cut all of these, knowing either character would have come off as detestable to readers, and from a suggestion from her younger brother that Pinhead would be more interesting if his erratic behaviour were natural, rather than drug-induced. Category:Chapter